Do you Wordle?

I do. I love a game. I love a game you can only play once/day. I love a word game. I love Wordle. I think everyone should send Josh Wardle $5. I know, the New York Times already paid him, but seriously. Everybody plays. He deserves $5. From everybody. Wouldn’t that just be super fun?

Anyway, I often wake up in the middle of the night because I am HOT. If my heart is dancing too much, there is very little chance I am going to get back to sleep until it calms down. I don’t immediately go for my phone, because I know the blue lights will jump through my eyes into my brain and run around and keep me awake (Or something like that. I read an article. On my phone). If a lot of time goes by, I give up and read. I don’t think of Wordle right away. But…usually…I do eventually. Then I try to talk myself out of it, because I am just plain stupid in the middle of the night. I usually last about…a minute. Or a waiting person’s minute, which I think is about 18 seconds.

BUT then I have to pause, because I use a different starting word every day. I have to think about the upcoming day and pick a five-letter word that goes with the day. I really don’t expect lightning to strike and that I will get the word right on the first guess, but I can’t bring myself to utterly abandon the idea and use a plural s (no plural s in Wordle!). I am a stickler enough that sometimes I think of a word, but it isn’t quite enough about the day. Or I’ve used it before. Sometimes I re-pick TEACH when I am really not planning anything other than work and can’t think of anything else, but for the most part I don’t repeat often.

Yesterday, I was struck with SOLVE, because I was teaching math. Ack. A V in the first guess. No matter, it really fit the day. Imagine my shock and delight when I got LVE in the right place. IN THE RIGHT PLACE! I immediately thought, “OH. It’s delve.” I started putting it in, then stopped. I told myself to think. Consider. THINK. Thinking is so tricky at 3:10am. I put my phone down and cuddled back in bed. I told myself I would finish in the real morning, when I woke up again.

That lasted several minutes, I think. I was very busily thinking ILVE. ILVE isn’t a thing. Is it? ILVE.MILVE. TILVE. No, ILVE isn’t a thing. OLVE, no I used O. ULVE? No. Maybe. CULVE. DULVE. No. What about OLVE? YES! SOLVE! No. Not solve. Duh. ALVE? ALVIN? Does that work? It’s a name, but could it be a thing? NO. LVE! ALVE. BALVE. CALVE. Calve! It’s a thing. When glaciers fall down. When cows have calves. Would they use calve? Maybe only I know calve is a word. Wait. The NYTimes knows calve is a word. HALVE! Halve is a word. When you verb something in half that’s halve. Right? Yes. No. I don’t know. Look it up. No. More blue lights will get in your brain. Delve is still a word, isn’t it? Go to sleep. VALVE! Valve is definitely a wordier word than calve or halve or delve. Delve has two Es. I hate re-using letters. Why? Words have the same letter. It isn’t a thing. It is a thing. Use the same letter. Aughhhh. VALVE has two Vs. I can’t use two Vs. I can use two Es. Vs? No. But valve is a real word. A real-er word. Leave it until real morning.

I put in VALVE.

It was DELVE.

AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH.

Then suddenly it was real morning and we were awake and I said, “Did you Wordle?” and he said, “No, I just woke up.” I said, “Wordle, so I can tell you what I did.”

Don’t you think Josh Wardle deserves an extra $5 for that much fun?

This one is hilarious. Sometimes you just can’t see that that yellow one is YELLOW.